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Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

nytimes.com

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Re: Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

#61

Post by gregorymichael »

aianus wrote: post #55
onwardly wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another reason is that playing DraftKings or FanDuel does actually make watching football more interesting- you care about games you otherwise wouldn't care about. Many people will happily continue to lose $10/week for the benefit of enjoying watching the NFL more. Online poker isn't as fun when you're consistently losing money- there's no "outside" benefit.

Putting $100 on a specific football match at 1.5% rake is both more fun and more profitable than DraftKings/FanDuel.

Difference is: entering a DFS lineup makes you care about most of the games.

Re: Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

#62

Post by avn2109 »

harryh wrote: post #59
jaynos wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advantage is in knowing what percentage of football players are started by the entire pool entrants. This information is released once that particular game is started (e.g. % start for NY Giants players would be known to all at 1 PM when their game started and % start for Denver Broncos players would be released at 4PM when that game started), but was known ahead of time by those who worked for the company. While…

But if you follow that strategy you might have a +EV but you are very very likely to lose in any given entry because you only win when all (or most of) your high variance players come through. And that is, by definition, unlikely. So this guy won big the first time he tried this? Or maybe he's tried 4 weeks now and has already won big? This still doesn't add up.

Undoubtedly the guy has a system and has diversified in either time or by parallelizing in several "leagues."

Re: Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

#63

Post by swang »

harryh wrote: post #59
jaynos wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advantage is in knowing what percentage of football players are started by the entire pool entrants. This information is released once that particular game is started (e.g. % start for NY Giants players would be known to all at 1 PM when their game started and % start for Denver Broncos players would be released at 4PM when that game started), but was known ahead of time by those who worked for the company. While…

But if you follow that strategy you might have a +EV but you are very very likely to lose in any given entry because you only win when all (or most of) your high variance players come through. And that is, by definition, unlikely. So this guy won big the first time he tried this? Or maybe he's tried 4 weeks now and has already won big? This still doesn't add up.

You can enter multiple times I believe with different lineups. So you enter some lineups with high variance low % picked players.

Re: Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

#64

Post by swang »

aianus wrote: post #40

The rake is so high on these sites (10%) that it's pretty much a scam whether they're pulling tricks like this or not.

Low stakes poker tournaments both live and online have juices >= 10%. See any live tournament up until maybe $500 buyins and $5+0.50 SNGs that you play online. The $1 SNGs are juiced like 25%. People still play them anyways.

Not necessarily disagreeing or agreeing with you about 10% of rake being a scam.

Re: Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

#65

Post by jimmytucson »

As far as I know, ownership percentage is available for any player in your lineup as soon as the first game begins. In other words, this is information is already public. That's what makes threads like this possible: http://reddit.com/r/dfsports/comments/3n1cdu/fanduel_percent...

Even if it were hidden from the public, it's fairly straightforward to reason that it is stored in a database and that at least one employee has read-access to that database. I would be more fascinated to learn that no DraftKings or FanDuel employee ever played DFS without at least looking at their own ownership data.

Re: Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

#66

Post by hoorayimhelping »

npkarnik wrote: post #25
icelancer wrote: post #3

As someone who worked in the Internet gambling industry and has to sit and see these Daily Fantasy Sports idiots run their loophole into the ground, I can only laugh. You can't flout your "legality" in front of a bunch of US Senators, advertise fraudulent returns, and have zero regulations and expect to get away with it.

I used to think this exactly...but now, given how heavily the NFL, NFLPA, and individual teams have been promoting Draftkings/FanDuel, it's obvious that the business model involves paying kickbacks to all the important stakeholders in the sport. And regarding how relatively chummy the NFL is with elected officials, don't forget that commissioner Roger Goddell's father was both a senator and representative from NY sta…

Draftkings have been running ads heavily on Saturdays for college football. I think it's more than ESPN; I remember seeing the commercials on CBS as well.

Re: Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

#67

Post by harryh »

swang wrote: post #63
harryh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you follow that strategy you might have a +EV but you are very very likely to lose in any given entry because you only win when all (or most of) your high variance players come through. And that is, by definition, unlikely. So this guy won big the first time he tried this? Or maybe he's tried 4 weeks now and has already won big? This still doesn't add up.

You can enter multiple times I believe with different lineups. So you enter some lineups with high variance low % picked players.

But if your system is to pick high variance players that are also underrepresented on other players rosters how many lineups can there be? I remain skeptical that this is a viable strategy.

Re: Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

#68

Post by genericpseudo »

onewaystreet wrote: post #34
icelancer wrote: post #3

As someone who worked in the Internet gambling industry and has to sit and see these Daily Fantasy Sports idiots run their loophole into the ground, I can only laugh. You can't flout your "legality" in front of a bunch of US Senators, advertise fraudulent returns, and have zero regulations and expect to get away with it.

Daily Fantasy Sports probably wont go the way of poker for a couple of reasons: 1. DraftKings and FanDual are US based companies, most of the big poker sites were not. 2. There is an exception for fantasy sports in the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. You can debate whether Daily Fantasy Sports should qualify, but unlike poker it is at least starting on legal ground. 3. Daily Fantasy Sports has buyins from…

FanDuel is a Scottish company.

Re: Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

#69

Post by aianus »

jimmytucson wrote: post #65

As far as I know, ownership percentage is available for any player in your lineup as soon as the first game begins. In other words, this is information is already public. That's what makes threads like this possible: http://reddit.com/r/dfsports/comments/3n1cdu/fanduel_percent... Even if it were hidden from the public, it's fairly straightforward to reason that it is stored in a database and that at least one employe…

> As far as I know, ownership percentage is available for any player in your lineup as soon as the first game begins. In other words, this is information is already public.

Except it's useless at that point because you can't change your lineup. The employee has the ownership percentage stats before anyone else and before the first game begins and can use it to craft his lineup.

Re: Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

#70

Post by bluecalm »

I don't know much about DFS but it seems to me there is a simple solution to information leakage problem:

1)players construct their line-ups and have a local program compute a secure hash of it (with some player specific data in it like arbitrary 10 digit number at the start)

2)only hashes are posted before the game starts (or once a deadline for submissions is reached or w/e)

3)then a player is allowed to post a matching (to the hash) line-up

Failing to do 3) results in a loss.

Are there any problems with that solution?

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